


this country we've made together

by callunavulgari



Series: Dark Month Collection [32]
Category: Kingdom Hearts, Newsflesh Trilogy - Mira Grant
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Gore, Character Death, F/M, M/M, Multi, spoilers for the end of Feed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2013-10-08
Packaged: 2017-12-28 19:23:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alive or dead, the truth won’t rest. My name is Riku Mason, and I am begging you: Rise up while you can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this country we've made together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darthvair65](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthvair65/gifts).



> Dark Month, Day 7. Soriku, zombies. Much of the dialogue is taken verbatim from the book Feed, as are the quotes and blog posts. (Though in the case of the blog posts, some of them are different.) I do not own those words, they are not mine, they are the lovely Mira Grant's. I am borrowing them to make this fusion shinier. Also, fuck Ao3. All of the blog posts were supposed to be in a different font, the quotes were supposed to be centered, and the blog posts were supposed to be indented in a cool manner. But I've been fucking around with this for the last three hours and am totally done. You can see it in it's original format on dreamwidth [here](http://callunavulgari.dreamwidth.org/5361.html?style=site).

_You can’t kill the truth._  
 **—Riku Mason**  
  
 _Nothing is impossible to kill. It’s just that sometimes after you kill something, you have to keep shooting it until it stops moving. And that’s really sort of neat when you stop to think about it._  
 **—Sora Mason**  
  
.  
  
  
Everyone has someone on the Wall.  
No matter how remote you may think you are from the events that changed the world during the brutal summer of 2014, you have someone on the Wall. Maybe they’re a cousin, maybe they’re an old family friend, or maybe they’re just somebody you saw on TV once, but they’re yours. They belong to you. They died to make sure that you could sit in your safe little house behind your safe little walls, watching the words of one jaded twenty-two-year-old journalist go scrolling across your computer screen. Think about that for a moment. They died for you.  
Now take a good look at the life you’re living and tell me: Did they do the right thing?  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You,_**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, May 16, 2039**  
  
.  
  
The blood test takes eight and a half minutes to flash green, cycling for so long that the burly guards with guns start getting a little twitchy. Sora’s standing calm as can be next to him, eyes hard, staring ahead like nothing out of the ordinary is going on.  
  
(There isn’t; blood tests that take too long have been a part of their life for the entirety of their lives.)  
  
Finally, the little light settles on green and Sora gives the guards a sunny grin, hardness slouching away like dead skin.  
  
Developing retinal Kellis-Amberlee wasn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to him, but it does make waiting around rookie guards more stressful than it should be.  
  
“Good security,” Kairi remarks, a little voice in his ear. She’s still back in the van, snacks and tea to keep her company. As far as he’s concerned, she’s the lucky one.  
  
“I would be disappointed if it wasn’t,” Riku snorts, ignoring the weird look the guard next to him sends his way. Communication devices weren’t expressly forbidden, so if someone has a shit fit, they can suck it.  
  
Kairi giggles, like static in his ear, and beside him, Sora shifts, bumping their shoulders together.  
  
.  
  
My profession owes a lot to Dr. Alexander Kellis, inventor of the misnamed “Kellis flu,” and Amanda Amberlee, the first individual successfully infected with the modified filovirus that researches dubbed “Marburg Amberlee.” Before them, blogging was something people thought should be done by bored teenagers talking about how depressed they were. Some used it to report on politics and the news, but that application was widely viewed as reserved for conspiracy nuts and people whose opinions were too vitriolic for the mainstream. The blogosphere wasn’t threatening the traditional news media, not even as it started having a real place on the world stage. They thought of us as “quaint.” Then the zombies came and everything changed.  
    The “real” media was bound by rules and regulations, while the bloggers were bound by nothing more than the speed of their typing. We were the first to report that people who’d been pronounced dead were getting up and making an all you can eat buffet on their relatives. We were the ones who stood up and said, “yes, there are zombies, and yes, they’re killing people” while the rest of the world was still buzzing about amazing act of ecoterrorism that released a half-tested “cure for the common cold” into the atmosphere. We were giving tips on self-defense when everybody else was barely beginning to admit that there might be a problem.  
    The early network reports are preserved online, over the protests of the media conglomerates. They sue from time to time and get the reports taken down, but someone always puts them up again. We’re never going to forget how badly we were betrayed. People died in the streets while news anchors made jokes about people taking the zombie movies too seriously and showed footage they claimed depicted teenagers “horsing around” in latex and bad stage makeup. According to the timestamps on those reports, the first one aired the day Dr. Matras from the CDC violated national security to post details on the infection on his eleven-year-old daughter’s blog. Twenty-five years after the fact his words—simple, bleak, and unforgiving against their background of happy teddy bears—still send shivers down my spine. There was a war on, and the ones whose responsibility it was to inform us wouldn’t even admit that we were fighting it.  
    But some people knew and screamed everything they understood across the Internet. Yes, the dead were rising, said the bloggers; yes, there was a chance we might lose because by the time we understood what was going on, the whole damn world was infected. The moment Dr. Kellis’s cure hit the air, we had no choice but to fight.  
    We fought as hard as we could. That’s when the Wall began. Every blogger who died during the summer of ‘14 is preserved there, from the politicos to the soccer moms. We’ve taken their last entries and collected them in one place, to honor them, and to remember what the paid for the truth. We still add people to the Wall. Someday, I’ll probably post Sora’s name there, along with some lighthearted last entry that ends with “See you later.”  
    Every method of killing a zombie was tested somewhere. A lot of the time, the people who tested it died shortly afterward, but they posted their results first. We learned what worked, what to do, and what to watch for in the people around us. It was a grassroots revolution based on two simple precepts: survive however you could, and report back whatever you learned because it might keep somebody else alive. They say that everything you ever needed to know, you learned in kindergarten. That the world learned that summer was “share.”  
    Things were different when the dust cleared. Some people might find it petty to say “especially where the news was concerned,” but if you ask me, that’s where the real change happened. People didn’t trust regulated news anymore. They were confused and scared, and they turned to the bloggers, who might be unfiltered and full of shit, but were fast, prolific, and allowed you to triangulate on the truth. Get your news from six or nine sources and you can usually tell the bullshit from the reality. If that’s too much work, you can find a blogger who does your triangulation for you. You don’t have to worry about another zombie invasion going unreported because someone, somewhere, is putting it online.  
    The blogging community divided into its current branches within a few years of the Rising, reacting to swelling ranks and a changing society. You’ve got Newsies, who report fact as untainted by opinion as we can manage, and our cousins, the Stewarts, who report opinion informed by fact. The Irwins go out and harass danger to give the relatively housebound general populace a little thrill, while their sedate counterparts, the Aunties, share stories of their lives, recipes, and other snippets to keep people happy and relaxed. And, of course, the Fictionals, who fill the online world with poetry, stories, and fantasy. They have a thousand branches, all with their own names and customs, none of them meaning a damn thing to anyone who isn’t a Fictional. We’re the all-purpose opiate of the new millenium: We report the news, we make the news, and we give you a way to escape when the news becomes too much to handle.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, August 6, 2039**  
  
.  
  
Riku and Sora Mason have been brothers since they were six months old, adopted by a young up-and-coming couple some time after the Rising. Neither of them have ever been particularly fond of the Masons, though Sora tried enough when he was younger.  
  
It hadn’t mattered. The Mason’s just weren’t a lovable sort. Maybe they’d started off that way, before their real son had been savaged by a zombie golden retriever, but whatever goodness had bled off of them a long time ago, when their son bled out in their backyard.  
  
Fast forward twenty some years and they’re just as independent, though they’ve learned to tolerate their parents.  
  
After the End Times was Riku’s idea.  
  
He’d never been good with being caged up, and aiming for the news was a way to escape that life. It didn’t hurt that they’d been raised in the spotlight already, so journalism, while not necessarily in their blood, was all but. Nature vs. nurture and all that.  
  
So they’d gone ahead with the idea, did some interviews, and found Kairi, their technology guru and head of the fictional section. That was that. They got their licenses, commandeered a lot of technology, and went out to poke zombies with sticks—and they got paid for it.  
  
They got good ratings. It worked.  
  
The campaign trail was a pipe dream at first, but they’d applied, and surprisingly, they’d been selected. Senator Aqua Ryman was young enough that her running for president was the new big thing on the internet. Amazing that in a world full of zombies, politics still trumps all, but that was the world for you.  
  
And here they were; ready to tell the story—ready to give the world the truth.  
  
.  
  
    My friend Kairi likes to say love is what keeps us together. The old pop songs had it right, and it’s all about love, full stop, no room for arguing. Namine says loyalty is what matters—doesn’t matter what kind of person you were, as long as you were loyal. Riku, he says it’s the truth that matters. We live and die for the chance to maybe tell a little bit of the truth, maybe shame the Devil just a little bit before we go.  
    Me, I say those are all great things to live for, if they’re what happens to float your boat, but at the end of the day, there’s got to be somebody you’re doing it for. Just one person you’re thinking of every time you make a decision, every time you tell the truth, or tell a lie, or anything.  
    I’ve got mine. Do you?  
  
 **—From _Hail to the King_ ,**  
 **the blog of Sora Mason, September 19, 2039**  
  
.  
  
They never factored in just how much of the truth they’d be sharing—that their campaign trail that would catapult them into alpha blogging would also catapult them straight into shit. That within weeks, their site would have one of the highest ratings in the world.  
  
People plan for things to go wrong, sure. But planning for something like this would have been like looking at a broadcast from the president and saying, three weeks from now, I’m gonna be that guy.  
  
Shit like this isn’t planned for. Shit like this springs out, slaps you in the face, and waits for you to ask for more.  
  
.  
  
    To explain my feelings for Senator Aqua Ryman, I must first note that I am a naturally suspicious soul: that which seems too good to be true, in my experience, generally is. It is thus with the natural cynicism that is my hallmark that I make the following statement:  
    Aqua Ryman, Wisconsin’s political golden girl, is too good to be true.  
    As a lifelong member of the Republican party in an era when half the party has embraced the idea that the living dead are a punishment from God and we poor sinners must do “penance” before we can enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it would be easy for her to be a bitter old hag, and yet, she shows no signs of it. She is friendly, cordial, intelligent, and sincere enough to convince this reporter, even at three in the morning when the convoy has broken down in the middle of Kentucky for the third time and the language has turned saltier than the Pacific tide. Rather than preaching damnation, she counsels tolerance. Rather than calling for a “war on the undead,” she recommends improving our defenses and the quality of life in the still-inhabited zones.  
    She is, in short, a politician who understands that the dead are the dead, the living are the living, and we need to treat both with equal care.  
    Ladies and gentlemen, unless this woman has some truly awe-inspiring skeletons in her closer, it is my present and considered belief that she would make an excellent President of the United States of America, and might actually begin to repair the social, economic, and political damage that has been done by the events of these past thirty years. Of course, that can only mean that she won’t win.  
    But a guy can dream.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, February 5, 2040**  
  
.  
  
“God is the ultimate recycler,” Senator Aqua Ryman says on a Thursday night in front of a crowd of people in response to a question about her thoughts on the rapture.  
  
Kairi is squeaking with excitement next to him, frantically pushing buttons and angling cameras as Ryman takes a seat on the edge of the stage. Her modest skirt tangles around her ankles, a silky blue like the sea. She speaks eloquently, without any sign of faltering, and the room is silent all around her.  
  
“We have too much work left to do right here,” Ryman finishes, and the stern looking woman who’d asked the question nods, slowly, and thanks her.  
  
Kairi lets out a gleeful little noise and hisses, “We’re in the top three percent, Riku.”  
  
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Riku mutters, eyes still on Senator Ryman’s smiling, girlish face. “I do believe we’ve got ourselves a presidential candidate.”  
  
.  
  
  
 _You tell the truth as you see it, and you let the people decide whether to believe you. That’s responsible reporting. That’s playing fair. Didn’t your parents teach you anything?_  
 **—Sora Mason**  
  
 _Darwin was right. Death doesn’t play fair._  
 **—Riku Mason**  
  
.  
  
When they were nine, they had an exceptionally stupid babysitter, who’d taken one look at Riku’s sunglasses and tossed them into the backyard the second their parents were gone. “You don’t need those,” he’d sneered and wandered off to slouch in front of the television.  
  
They’d gone after them, because they weren’t the type of kids who were afraid to get dirty—rooting around in tall grass, because mowing in a Level 7 Hazard Zone was a thing of the past.  
  
Sora had been crouching, squinting in the dim light, when Riku had frozen, eyes wide.  
  
“Sora?” he’d said, whisper-soft.  
  
“What?” Sora had muttered back, still looking for those stupid glasses.  
  
“There’s somebody else in the yard.”  
  
It hadn’t gone well for the babysitter. Not that he’d gotten eaten, but Riku’s pretty sure he would have preferred that over the shit their parents gave him. Riku had snuck into Sora’s bed for a week after, not because he was scared, but because it gave them a plausible excuse to share the same bed for a little while.  
  
Never let it be said that they aren’t above taking advantage of a situation.  
  
.  
  
The zombies show up after the Q and A.  
  
Predictably, Sora does something stupid.  
  
“Bite me,” Sora grins, perched on a fence above the heads of five snarling, snapping zombies.  
  
“Not while I’m breathing, oh brother mine,” Riku not-quite singsongs back, a small smile curling around his lips.  
  
.  
  
If you think being a journalist is glamorous, think again. Oh, it’s got it’s perks, but the bad days aren’t just your run of the mill shit where you’ve forgotten glasses or maybe stubbed your toe. Bad days as a journalist means taking down zombies and burning the bodies after.  
  
That is, if you’re a good journalist, of course.  
  
Hell, you might spend your entire time in a van piggy-backing off of another report. But the good ones, the ones who go out on the field—they get the stories. They get the blood, guts, and the smells.  
  
.  
  
...they come to us, these restless dead,  
Shrouds woven from the words of men,  
With trumpets sounding overhead  
(The walls of hope have grown so thin  
And all our vaunted innocence  
Has withered in this endless frost)  
That promise little recompense  
For all we risk, for all we’ve lost  
  
 **—From _Eakly, Oklahoma_ ,**  
 **originally published in _By the Sounding Sea_ , the blog of Kairi Meissonier, February 11, 2040**  
  
.  
  
They crash that night—hard. Riku watches through sleepy eyes as Sora staggers over and tugs down the blackout curtain, Sora whining low in his throat and slumping into bed next to him. He throws an arm around his brother’s hips, tugs him closer, and that’s it. Lights out.  
  
He surfaces the next morning to blinding pain and Sora hissing curses at Kairi. It’s so unlike him that Riku gets stuck in some kind of fugue state, where he’s not sure if he’s awake or dreaming.  
  
“Do you want to blind him?” Sora snarls, pressing the palm of one hand against Riku’s eyes and fumbling for his sunglasses with the other. When Riku was little, he used to sleep with blindfolds knotted against the back of his head—a thick dark cloth that would keep the light from blinding him if a babysitter was feeling stupid. He’d stopped wearing them when he started going out in the field—when he wasn’t sure if he would wake up to zombie crashing through his window. He misses it.  
  
“You weren’t answering your phone,” Kairi replies, calm as can be. He can almost hear her shrugging.  
  
Finally, Sora manages to locate the glasses, tenderly sliding them onto Riku’s face. His eyes still sting—barely been awake for ten minutes and already has a migraine—but the world going dim around him is a relief.  
  
“You couldn’t find another way to wake us?” Sora asks. His voice is still faintly venomous, but the snarl is slowly draining from it.  
  
Kairi snorts. “You’re kidding, right? You two sleep with guns. Now get up, Senator Ryman wants to see us.”  
  
.  
  
Ratings at 2.3. Sabotage. Sora stealing one of Riku’s newsies.  
  
Sabotage.  
  
.  
  
 _The difference between the truth and a lie is that both of them can hurt, but only one will take the time to heal you afterward._  
 **—Roxas Cousins**  
  
 _We live in a world of our own creation. We’ve made our bed, ladies and gentlemen, whether we intended to or not. Now, we get the honor of lying down in it._  
 **—Lea “Axel” Atherton**  
.  
  
Super Tuesday happens.  
  
“No, it wasn’t worth it,” Senator Aqua Ryman tells him, her fingers curling and uncurling around the hem of her pencil skirt.  
  
“They signed on to draw a paycheck and maybe, along the way, help an ideal find a place in this modern world. Instead, they passed on to whatever reward may be waiting for us—for heroes—in the next world. If those men and women had lived, then yes, I could have walked away from this election a little sadder, a little wiser, but convinced I’d done the right thing, I’d done my best, and next time, I’d be able to make that run all the way to the end of the road. So no, it wasn’t worth it.”  
  
There’s a long stunned pause, and then the room erupts into applause.  
  
He needs data ports.  
  
“I need to use one of your data ports,” he says. Aqua smiles at him.  
  
.  
  
“We’re going to the Republican National Convention,” Kairi tells him, voice warm, as someone else reveals the results to the rest of the room.  
  
.  
  
Meeting Roxas Cousins makes Riku late for his interview with the governor. The interview with Xehanort is terrible and kind of infuriating, which is why he promptly forgets that he agreed to meet with Roxas later.  
  
“There’s a man here for you,” Sora tells him later, while Riku’s editing Ansem’s snide remarks into a publish worthy report. “He says you invited him here.”  
  
Sora leans forward and smirks, tone dripping with affected smarm. It sits wrong on his face as he purrs, “Got a little election night itch you want scratched? I mean, he’s not all bad, but I didn’t think the corn-fed farm boys were your type—”  
  
Riku snorts. “In another life, you might have been a corn-fed farm boy.”  
  
Then he pauses, considering. “Wait—blonde hair, blue eyes, maybe a little younger than us? Looks like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth?”  
  
“Or anywhere else you might stick it,” Sora snorts, and then gapes. At first Riku thinks he’s just that appalled at himself, but then he says, “Wait, you really did invite him here?”  
  
“Jealousy doesn’t become you, Sora,” Riku laughs.  
  
Sora slams the door in his face.  
  
.  
  
Now that I’ve had my long-delayed meeting with the man, there’s one question on everybody’s mind: What did I think of Governor Ansem Tate of Texas, elected three times in a landslide of votes, each time from voters from both sides of the partisan fence, possessed of an incredible record for dispensing justice and settling disputes in a state famed for its belligerence, hostility, and political instability?  
    I think he’s the scariest of the many frightening things I’ve encountered since this campaign began. And that includes the zombies.  
    Governor Tate is a man who cares so much about freedom that he’s willing to give it to you at gunpoint. He’s a man who cares so deeply about our schools that he supports shutting down public education in favor of safety certifications. A man who cares so deeply about our farmers that he would reduce the scope of Mason’s Law to allow not only large herding dogs but livestock up to a hundred and thirty pounds back into residential neighborhoods. Governor Tate wants us all to experience the glories of his carefree youth, including, it would seem, pursuit by infected collies and zombie goats.  
    To make matters worse, he has a good speaking manner, a parochial appearance that polls well in a large percentage of the country, and a decorated history of military service. In short, ladies and gentlemen, he is a legitimate contender to hold the highest office in our nation, as well as being the man who seems most likely to escalate the unending conflict between us and the infected into a state of all-out war.  
    I can’t tell you to choose Senator Ryman as the Republican Party candidate just because I don’t like Governor Tate. But I can tell you this: The governor’s biases, like mine, are a matter of public record. Do research. Do your homework. Learn what this man would do to our country in the name of preserving a brand of freedom that is as destructive as it is impossible to secure. Know your enemy.  
    That’s what freedom really means.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, March 14, 2040**  
  
.  
  
Aqua wins—of course she does. He watches her with her husband, waving to the people in the crowd, eyes shining with happy tears.  
  
Then there’s Kairi’s voice in his ear, hissing, “Riku there’s been an outbreak at the farm.”  
  
.  
  
He does the only thing he knows how to do: he reports the news.  
  
.  
  
I’ve done a lot of difficult things over the course of my journalistic career. Few, in the end, were pretty; most of the supposed “glamour” of reporting the news is reserved for the people who sit behind desks and look good while they tell you about the latest tragedy to rock the world. It’s different in the field, and even after doing this for years, I don’t think I grasped how different it was. Not until I looked into the faces of presidential candidate Aqua Ryman and her husband and informed them that the body of their partner had just been cremated by federal troops outside their family ranch in Parrish, Wisconsin.  
    You’ve hear about Ventus Ryman by now. Twenty-nine years old, father of one of their two children, writer. He’d been riding since he was old enough to walk; that’s how he was able to bridle that postamplification horse and get his children off the grounds. He was a real American hero—at least, that’s what all the papers and news sites say. Even mine.  
    If you’ll allow a reporter his brief moment of sentiment, I’d like to tell you about the Ven that I met, if only for a moment, in the words and the faces of his partners.  
    Ventus Ryman was a good man. He was cheerful. He was kind. He hated getting writers block before a deadline, especially if it was movie night with the kids. He liked reading trashy romances and eating ice cream straight from the container, and nothing made him happier than working with the horses. He stayed home from the Republican National Convention to get ready for his coming novel, but mostly so the kids would have at least one of their parents with them. Because of that decision, he died, and his children lived. He couldn’t save the children’s godfather and Aqua’s old riding instructor or the men who worked the ranch, but he saved his children, and in the end, what more could anyone have asked of him?  
    I told his partners that he was dead. That, if nothing else, qualifies me to say this:  
    Ventus, you will be deeply missed.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, March 17, 2040**  
  
.  
  
“Light,” Sora comments, catching his pack when Riku tosses it to him. “Did we decide to skip the cameras this time?”  
  
Riku snorts. “Actually, I decided to skip the weapons. If we meet any zombies, we’ll pacify them with Hostess snack cakes.”  
  
“Even the living dead love Hostess snack cakes.”  
  
“Precisely.” Riku says, throwing a grin over his shoulder. “I’m driving.”  
  
“I’m not surprised,” he says, chucking the keys over the van with an irritated look so blatantly fake that Riku chuckles. Sora waits until they’re safely in the van before turning and asking, seriously, “So what are we really doing?”  
  
“We’re really visiting the scene of a tragic accident to determine whether it was caused by gross human negligence or a simple series of unavoidable events.” He grins, somewhat grimly. “Buckle up.”  
  
.  
  
A lot of time was spent looking into the science and application of forensics before the Rising. How did this man die? What did he die for? Could he have been saved? It’s been different since the Rising, as the possibility of infection makes it too dangerous for investigators to pry into any crime scene that hasn’t been disinfected, while the strength of modern disinfectants means that once they’ve been used, there’s nothing to find. DNA testing and miraculous deductions brought about by a few clinging fibers are things of the past. As soon as the dead started walking, they stopped sharing their secrets with the living.  
    For modern investigators, whether with the police or the media, this has meant a lot of “going back to our roots.” An active mind is worth a thousand tests you can’t run, and knowing where to look is worth even more. It’s all a matter of learning how to think, learning how to eliminate the impossible, and admitting that sometimes what’s left, however improbable, is going to be the truth.  
The world is strange that way.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, March 24, 2040**  
  
.  
  
They find a cat, a lot of blood, and an intact syringe of live Kellis-Amberlee at the farm. Riku is nearly blinded by overzealous dickheads, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  
  
Aqua and her husband’s partner was infected with 900 million microns of live KA and murder is really so much different than a horse going into spontaneous amplification.  
  
.  
  
Following the campaign of Congresswoman Ursula Wagman taught me one important fact about politics: Sometimes, style can matter more than substance. Let’s face it: We’re not talking about one of the great political minds of our age. We’re talking about a former stripper who got her seat in Congress by promising her constituency that for every thousand votes she got, she’d wear something else inappropriate to the floor. Judging by the landslide of that first win, we’ll be seeing congressional hearings graced by a lady in lingerie long after the end of her term in office.  
    But she didn’t win. Despite the general malaise of the voting public and their willingness to put “interesting” above “good for them” in nine out of ten cases, Wagman’s run for the presidential seat proved to be the tenth event. Why was this? I place the blame partially on Senator Aqua Ryman, a woman who proved that style and substance can be combined to the benefit of both, and, more important, that integrity is not actually dead.  
    I also blame After the End Times and Riku and Sora Mason, for their willingness to get into the campaign in a way that has seldom been seen in this century. Their reporting hasn’t been impartial or perfect, but it has something we see even more rarely than integrity.  
    It has heart.  
    It is with great joy that I report that the rest of America’s youth aren’t actually riddled with ennui and apathy; that the truth hasn’t been fully forsaken for the merely entertaining; that there’s a place in this world for reporting the facts as accurately and concisely as possible and allowing people to draw their own conclusions.  
    I’ve never been more proud of finding a place where I can belong.  
  
 **—From _Another Point of True_ ,**  
 **the blog of Roxas Cousins, March 18, 2040**  
  
.  
  
Aqua announces her running mate. She gives them a polite way out.  
  
They decline, and the look Ansem sends them makes Riku’s skin crawl.  
  
.  
  
Things it is not polite to discuss at the dinner table: politics, religion, and the walking dead.  
    Things we wind up discussing at the dinner table every single night: politics, religion, and the walking dead. Along with small-caliber versus large-caliber weapons for field use, personal security gear, Xion’s garden, our ratings, and vehicle maintenance. It’s very claustrophobic and intense, with everyone on top of everybody else pretty much all the time. There’s no real privacy, and there’s so much security on the house that getting out for a smoke is almost as big a production as getting in. It’s like a fucked-up combination of prison and summer camp.  
    Is it weird that this is what I always dreamed the news would be like? Because, God, maybe I’m fucked in the head or something, but this is the most fun I’ve ever had. I want someone to remind me I said that when it all turns around and bites us in the ass.  
  
 **—From _Charming Not Sincere_ ,**  
 **the blog of Lea “Axel” Atherton, May 9, 2041**  
  
.  
  
It’s amazing how fast things can go to shit sometime. One day you’re happily telling the news, the next day you’re getting shot up by snipers on a deserted stretch of highway.  
  
“I didn’t mean to,” Kairi gasps, arm ringed in bite marks, her eyes fear bright. She would have been with Sora if she hadn’t elected to keep the driver of the equipment truck company. And now they’re here, watching her die. “They promised me they would fix things. They swore they’d make the country better. I didn’t realize until the outbreak at the farm.”  
  
Betrayal and sorrow irritate his heartstrings, at war inside him.  
  
“There are things you should know,” she tells them, fear sloughing away like deadened skin cells. She fires off her password, rapid fire, tears drying on her face. Riku wishes that that would make him feel better. It doesn’t. The virus doesn’t like giving up excess moisture.  
  
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. Riku’s heart aches and beside him, a keening noise of loss makes it’s way out of Sora’s mouth when Roxas brings them the field test.  
  
All the lights are red. Of course they are.  
  
“How could you do this to us, Kairi?” Sora demands. His hand’s still locked tight to hers, which is about as bad of a breach in protocol as her head being in Riku’s lap is. “People have died!”  
  
“And I’m one of them,” she whispers. “It’s time to shoot me. Please.”  
  
“Kairi—”  
  
“That’s not my name, is it?” she asks, opening her eyes. The pupils have swollen, black eating up the blue of her iris, until they’re as dark as Riku’s. “I don’t remember my name.”  
  
Sora whimpers, wiping at his tears and moving back, gesturing for Riku to do the same. He does, slowly, but when Sora starts to swing his pistol into place, Riku waves him down. “I hired her,” he explains with a grim smile. “It’s my job to fire her.”  
  
Kairi stares up at them, like they’re her lifeline—like if she looks away for even a second the human, thinking part of her will die off that much quicker. “I’m sorry,” Riku whispers, hand shaking on his gun. He has to put his other hand up to steady it.  
  
“Not your fault,” she replies, whisper-soft.  
  
“Your name is Kairi Marie Meissonier,” Riku says, and pulls the trigger.  
  
.  
  
It is the unfortunate duty of the management of After the End Times to announce that the maintainer of this blog, Kairi Marie Meissonier, passed away this past Saturday night, April 17, 2040, at approximately eight-fifteen P.M. Kairi was involved in an automotive accident that led, tragically to her being bitten by the truck driver, who had died and reawakened only a few moments previously.  
Please do not mistake the professional tone of this memo for a lack of compassion or mourning on the part of the staff here at After the End Times. Rather, take it for what it is, a sign of our respect and dismay over her sudden loss.  
Kairi’s family has been notified, and her entry has been transmitted to the Wall. Her blog and its archives will be maintained in her honor for the lifetime of this site.  
  
 **—A message from Riku Mason,**  
 **originally published in _By the Sounding Sea_**  
 **the blog of Kairi Meissonier, April 18, 2040**  
  
.  
  
Getting kidnapped by the CDC in the aftermath of shooting his best friend only makes things worse. Finding out the reason you were kidnapped was because you were reported dead five whole minutes before you called in the accident? That took the cake.  
  
.  
  
    The trouble with the news is simple: People, especially ones on the ends of the power spectrum, like it when you’re afraid.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, April 2, 2040**  
  
.  
  
Obviously, everyone thinks they faked their deaths for ratings.  
  
.  
  
 _Alive or dead, the truth won’t rest. My name is Riku Mason, and I am begging you: Rise up while you can._  
 **—Riku Mason**  
  
 _If you asked me now “Was it worth it? Were the things you got, the things you wanted?” I’d tell you “no,” because there isn’t any other answer. So I guess it’s a good thing that nobody’s ever going to ask. They never ask the things that really matter._  
 **—Sora Mason**  
  
.  
  
“With the Meissonier girl gone, we can’t steer them anymore. There’s no telling how many bugs she planted around the offices. I told you we couldn’t trust one of those people,” Tate’s voice snarls.  
  
“That fuck,” Roxas snarls, teeth bared.  
  
There’s an uneasy feeling curling in his guts, like things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.  
  
“Screamers on everyone,” Riku says into the quiet of the room. “Get the whole team online. I don’t care where they are, I want them here.”  
  
“Riku?” Roxas says, uncertainly. Sora is quiet, tellingly so.  
  
“Sit down and get started. We’ve got work to do.”  
  
.  
  
Every life has a watershed moment, an instant when you realize you’re about to make a choice that will define everything else you ever do, and that if you choose wrong, there may not be that many things left to choose. Sometimes the wrong choice is the only one that lets you face the end with dignity, grace, and awareness that you’re doing the right thing.  
I’m not sure we can recognize those moments until they’ve passed us. Was mine the day I decided to become a reporter? The day my brother and I logged onto a job fair and met a girl named Kairi? The day we decided to try for the “plum assignment” of staff bloggers to the Ryman campaign?  
Or was it the day we realized this might be the last thing we ever did… and decided not to care?  
My name is Riku Mason. My brother calls me “snookums” when he’s sure no one is listening.  
Welcome to my watershed.  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, April 8, 2040**  
  
.  
  
It takes two hours and seventeen minutes to gather every blogger, asssociate blogger, administrative employee, system administrator, and facilities coordinator employed by After the End Times together in their hastily opened virtual conference room.  
  
It takes less than an hour to lose most of them.  
  
“Welcome to our party,” Riku says to the remaining members. “Please check your mail. You’ll find an attachment detailing what we currently know.”  
  
.  
  
 This is the truth: We are a nation accustomed to being afraid. If I’m being honest, not just with you but with myself, it’s not just the nation, and it’s not just something we’ve grown used to. It’s the world, and it’s an addiction. People crave fear. Fear justifies everything. Fear makes it okay to have surrendered freedom after freedom, until our every move is tracked and recorded in a dozen databases the average man will never have access to. Fear creates, defines, and shapes our world, and without it, most of us would have no idea what to do with ourselves.  
    Our ancestors dreamed of a world without boundaries, while we dream new boundaries to put around our homes, our children, and ourselves. We limit our potential day after day in the name of a safety that we refuse to ever achieve. We took a world that was huge with possibility, and we made it as small as we could.  
    Feeling safe yet?  
  
 **—From _Images May Disturb You_ ,**  
 **the blog of Riku Mason, April 6, 2040**  
  
.  
  
Planning for a potential war isn’t easy, especially not when there’s so little time to do it. They train Xion as Kairi’s replacement in between plotting out various scenarios, use Axel to track down all of Kairi’s bugs.  
  
“She could have gone CIA,” Axel tells them the day they find bugs still functioning in Eakly. Riku tries to think of their Kairi, dying her hair back to its natural red in the sink every two weeks; reading poetry books out loud when she was bored; laughing in the sunlight, he tries to think of that girl in the CIA and can’t wrap his head around it. Maybe she hadn’t been able to either. Maybe that’s why she was with them.  
  
They stay up until dawn starts filtering in under the blackout curtains, and barely make it to the bed before slumping into sleep.  
  
Riku pretends that he doesn’t hear Sora punching the bathroom walls.  
  
Sora pretends that he doesn’t know that Riku’s not actually sleeping.  
  
They have six weeks of that—of barely sleeping in too claustrophobic hotel rooms in Houston, curling up next to each other at night and pretending that they aren’t afraid.  
  
They are afraid. They’re terrified.  
  
“Think we should have called it quits when we had the chance?” Sora murmurs one night, his mouth pressed up against Riku’s jaw. He’s drooling, a little, but Riku’s never cared about something as stupid as that.  
  
He thinks, for a moment—wonders, should they have? Should they have taken the out when Aqua gave it to them? Was telling the truth really worth it?  
  
He sighs, breath ruffling Sora’s flip-floppy hair. Sora dyes it when he can, he used to do it with Kairi, but it’s bleaching out blond again. Sometimes when he looks at Sora and Roxas side by side he wants to ask if they’ve ever thought about getting a DNA test, because since the moment Riku saw him he thought the resemblance was striking. When Sora lets his hair go, they look almost identical.  
  
“Probably,” he mutters back, finally. “But since when have we done what’s good for us?”  
  
Sora’s arms briefly tighten around his waist before relaxing again.  
  
They have six weeks in Houston. Six weeks of caffeine pills and red tape and frantic, adrenaline-filled, terrifying sex.  
  
Not that anyone will ever know about the last bit.  
  
.  
  
Sometimes we leave the connecting door between our rooms open all night. We’d still share a room if they’d let us, turn the other room into an office and have done with it. Because both of us hate to be alone, and both of us hate to have other people—people outside the country we’ve made together—around when we’re defenseless. We’re always defenseless when we’re asleep.  
    We leave the connecting door open, and I wake up in the night to the sound of him snoring, and I wonder how the hell I’m going to stay alive after he finally slips up. He’ll die first, we both know it, but I don’t know… I really don’t know how long I’ll stay alive without him. That’s the part Sora doesn’t know. I don’t intend to be an only child for long.  
  
 **—From _Postcards from the Wall_ ,**  
 **the unpublished files of Riku Mason, June 19, 2040**  
  
.  
  
Sacramento, California is the worst. It’s so hot and dry that it feels like suffocating on too thin, stale air. They meet up with Roxas, get a ride to the center, and reunite with the van.  
  
Only problem so far is that in the craze of being overworked and exhausted, Riku had forgotten the keynote speech. Shit.  
  
“I’ve got it,” Sora shrugs. “I can wear a monkey suit and take notes like a Newsie. They’ll never know the difference, and I bet the invite just says ‘Mason.’ Shang?”  
  
The bodyguard, looking perplexed, just nods.  
  
Sora beams, all boyish pearly whites and rosy cheeks that still haven’t quite lost their youthfulness. “Well, that’s settled then. C’mon Roxas, let’s let Riku get some work done.”  
  
With that, they flounce away, followed by a stern looking Shang.  
  
Riku chuckles, just a little, and slides into the van.  
  
.  
  
The sweetest summer gift of all  
Is knowing spring gives way to fall  
And when the winds of winter call,  
We’ll answer as we must.  
Persephone chose to descend  
Into the night that has no end,  
In Hades’ hands she goes to spend  
Her nights amidst the dust.  
For Hades holds his loved ones dear,  
Away from life, away from fear,  
And so when death is drawing near,  
In Hades’ hands we trust.  
  
 **—From _By the Sounding Sea_ , **  
**the blog of Kairi Meissonier, April 15, 2040**  
  
.  
  
 _What’s the story?_ Riku types, words appearing white against the black command window.  
  
 _Riku? Confirm._  
  
 _Password is ‘tintinnabulation.’_  
  
 _Confirmed. Have you checked your email?_  
  
 _Not yet. We just got in._  
  
 _Log off. Go read. I don’t want to waste your time with a reframe._  
  
Riku stops and stares. It isn’t like Axel to be cryptic. He usually saves that for the pros. Heart in his throat, Riku sets his hands back on the keyboard. He’s nervous and sweating. He doesn’t like it, it feels wrong, every instinct in him screaming to just grab Sora and go. _How bad?_ he types.  
  
 _Bad enough_ , is Axel’s reply. And then— _Go._  
  
.  
  
I didn’t always know I wanted to be a journalist, just that I wanted out. Somehow. Anyhow, just to be out of that birdcage. Then Sora took to journalism and I started noticing too. After that, they were the next best thing to superheroes. They told the truth. They helped people. I wouldn’t find out about the other things journalists did—the lies and espionage and back-stabbing and bribes—for years, and by that point, it was too late. The news was in my blood. Like every junkie in the world, I needed my next hit too badly to give it up.  
    I’ve wanted nothing but the news and the truth and to make the world a better place since I was a little boy, and I never regretted it for a minute. Not until now. Because this is bigger than me, and it’s bigger than Sora, and God, I’m scared. And I’m still a junkie. I still can’t walk away.

  
 **—From _Postcards from the Wall_ ,**  
 **the unpublished files of Riku Mason, June 19, 2040**  
  
.  
  
The hyperventilating is the worst of it. Riku’s never had asthma—never had panic attacks, but he’s starting to feel bad for the people who do.  
  
It takes him five minutes to pull on his nicest tux—the one with the pale grey vest and the seafoam green tie that Sora had gotten him for his birthday ages ago. Sora had grinned at him across the dining room table as their mother cooed over it, and later that night, he’d pulled Riku close and kissed him sweetly on the lips, saying It matches your eyes.  
  
Because it did. The tie was the exact shade of Riku’s eyes from before—before he’d gotten retinal KA—the shade that most people would never see.  
  
The need for formal attire is cumbersome, but he’d learned how to get ready fast when he was very young.  
  
Shang is on duty when he gets there, straightening when he catches sight of the way Riku’s dressed.  
  
“Going somewhere?” he asks.  
  
Riku tosses his hair a little, not because he’s flirting, but because getting tangled in his sunglasses. Also, okay, he might be flirting a little, because the way Shang’s eyes trace down the line of his suit is just not subtle. “Planning on doing some gate-crashing,” he says, feeling stupid for doing all but fluttering his eyes. He’s never been good at flirting—not the way Sora was. Sora could smile at a dandelion and make it fall madly in love with him. Riku? Riku just stands there awkwardly and tries to fight down the urge to start hitting people until they back out of his personal bubble.  
  
He bites his lip. “Give a boy a ride?”  
  
Shang cocks an eyebrow at him. “Didn’t your brother go in your place?”  
  
“Something came up. I need to be there ten minutes ago.”  
  
Shang studies him for a long moment. “This have something to do with Eakly?” he asks, because Shang’s partner Ping had died there. He hadn’t really been the same since.  
  
“It’s got everything to do with Eakly,” he says flatly, because he doesn’t have time to wonder if Shang and the rest of the security detail are in on it. He needs to get there.  
  
Shang watches him for another moment, then nods, business-like, and has one of the other guards cover for him.  
  
They go.  
  
Getting past the security is annoying, but after two blood tests and an irritating guard, he’s inside, tapping his ear cuff.  
  
“Sora,” he murmurs quietly, trying not to look too much like an idiot talking to himself.  
  
“Riku, I thought you weren’t coming,” Sora’s voice comes, instant and startled sounding.  
  
“Remember the punch line I forgot yesterday?” he asks, scanning the crowd. “The really funny one?”  
  
Instantly, Sora sounds wary—on guard. “Yeah, I remember. Did you figure out the rest of the joke?”  
  
“Mmm-hmm,” Riku mutters. “Where are you?”  
  
“Podium. Ryman’s shaking hands. What’s the punch line?”  
  
“Riku chuckles, humorlessly, and says, “It’ll be funnier if I tell you in person.”  
  
He finds his brother and Roxas, each holding flutes of what look to be champagne if you don’t pay attention to the bubbles. He tells them what he’s learned—where the money comes from, where it’s going, the IPs getting pulled. Atlanta.  
  
He slips a data stick into Sora’s pocket, disguising the movement with a pat to his chest. It might look like he’s going for his brother’s wallet, but that would be it.  
  
“I’m going in,” he whispers, eyes on a smiling Aqua in the center of the crowd.  
  
.  
  
We were eleven when I first understood that we weren’t immortal. I always knew that the Masons had a biological son. Our parents didn’t like talking about him, but he came up every time someone mentioned Mason’s Law. It’s funny, but I sort of hero-worshipped him when I was a kid, because people remembered him. I never really considered the fact that they remembered him for dying.  
    Riku and I were hunting for our Christmas presents when he found the box. It was in the closet in Mom’s office, and we’d probably overlooked it a thousand times before, but it caught Riku’s eye that day for some reason, and he hauled it out, and we looked inside. That was the day I met my brother.  
    The box was full of photographs we’d never seen, pictures of a laughing little boy in a world where he’d never been forced to worry about the things we lived with every day. Zack riding a pony at the state fair. Zack playing in the sand on a beach with no fences in sight. Zack with his long-haired, short-sleeved, laughing mother, who didn’t look anything like our mother, who wore her hair short and her sleeves long enough to hide the body armor, whose holster dug into my side when she kissed me good night. He had a smile that said he’d never been afraid of anything, and I hated him a little, because his parents were so much happier than mine.  
    We never talked about that day. We put the pictures back in the closet, and we never found our Christmas presents, either. But that was the day I realized… if Zack, this happy, innocent kid, could die, so could we. Someday, we’d be cardboard boxes in the back of somebody’s closet, and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. Riku knew it, too; maybe he even knew it before I did. We were all we had, and we could die. It’s hard to live knowing something like that. We’ve done the best we could.  
    No one gets to ask us for anything more. Not now, not ever. When history looks our way—stupid, blind history, that judges everything and never gives a shit what we paid to get it—it better remember that no one had a right to ask us for this. No one.  
 **—From _Hail to the King_ ,**  
 **the blog of Sora Mason, June 19, 2040**  
  
  
.  
  
She doesn’t believe him—she doesn’t believe him. Her eyes are fear bright and she scowls at him and says, “Riku, I think you need to leave right now.”  
  
He leaves, snagging Sora and Roxas as he goes.  
  
“If looks could kill…” Roxas whispers as Ansem glares at them and it’s funny, but if Riku starts laughing now he’ll never stop. He’ll laugh until security puts him down for frightening the other guests.  
  
“We’d be joining Ven Ryman,” he says, because he’s petty and angry and wants out. That’s all he’s ever wanted, since before his life became a quest for truth and justice. He just wanted out of his cage.  
  
“It’s all Tate,” he tells Roxas in the car, rehashing on all the things that Axel had dug up. The money—everything.  
  
Shang scowls at him from the driver’s street. “Ping was a good ma—” he trips over himself a little, obviously still having trouble remembering that Ping wasn’t actually a man in the end. “Ping was a good person,” he repeats. “He—she deserved better. Man who started that outbreak, well. That man doesn’t deserve better.”  
  
Riku knows. He knows, he does, and he doesn’t plan on sheltering Tate at all. He tells Shang as much.  
  
They slide out of the car, parting with Roxas halfway to their trailer.  
  
Getting out of the tux is a relief. Riku’s still sweating nervously, feeling oddly naked without body armor on his person. “Hey,” Sora whispers when he’s doing up the last of his buttons. Riku looks up to find Sora smiling at him, soft. “It’ll be okay.”  
  
Riku quirks a sick-looking smile in his direction and accepts the sweet kiss that Sora presses to his lips.  
  
That’s when they hear the shouting.  
  
In the end, Roxas staggering up the path clutching tight to a dead cat is what saves their lives. Fifteen steps means that when the trailers explode, they get a little singed, and then they run.  
  
He barely feels something prick his bicep right before making it into the van, adrenaline rushing through his veins as Roxas, just ahead of them, passes the blood test, the doors swinging open like benediction.  
  
He doesn’t even notice until he’s turning to flick the exterior cameras on—freezing in place.  
  
“Riku?”  
  
Sora’s voice, surprised, confused, still calm in the face of danger.  
  
Not calm in the face of this, because he doesn’t know yet.  
  
“We’ve got a problem,” he chokes out, yanking out the hollow plastic dart protruding from his skin. Roxas pales, seeing the stain spreading against his shirt. Sora just stares, like he’s seeing the end of the world.  
  
.  
  
If you want an easy job—if you want the sort of job where you never have to bury somebody who you care about—I recommend you pursue a career in whatever strikes your fancy… just so long as it isn’t the news.  
 **—From _Another Point of True_ ,**  
 **the blog of Roxas Cousins, June 20, 2040**  
  
.  
  
They’re simultaneously the longest and shortest couple of minutes of his life, Sora and Roxas bickering, Roxas going to get the blood test, the endless wait as the lights flash—redgreenredgreenredgreen—until it finally settles on one final color.  
  
“Told you I was right,” he whispers, throat dry.  
  
“Bet you’re sorry,” Sora whispers, automatic, unthinking— shock, Riku’s brain supplies.  
  
“What do we do?” Roxas says, quietly, and it’s heartbreaking to watch Sora’s blank eyes twitch to him, like he doesn’t even know what the question means. “I mean, we can’t just leave him here—”  
  
“No,” Sora hisses, vehement.  
  
Riku was dead before those lights flashed, deader than roadkill, deader than Edgar Allen Poe, and he doesn’t know if it’s psychosomatic, but the muscles around his pupil feel like they’re relaxing.  
  
“C’mon man,” Roxas whispers. “You can’t beat this. There’s no beating this. He’s gone. You need to realize that. He’s gone and I’m sorry, but we have to—”  
  
“Get me the medical kit from under the server rack. The red one,” Sora gets out, the boyish pleasantness gone from his tone. He sounds cold, but he sounds calm. Calm is good.  
  
When Roxas comes back, holding the box, Riku blinks at him. “You can go now, Roxas,” he chokes, fighting back hysterical laughter. “Take my bike and the gray backup drive. Get as far away as you can, then hit a data station and upload everything to the site. Free space. No subscription required. Creative Commons licensing.”  
  
“What is it?” Roxas asks, eyes lighting up with curiosity. In that moment, he reminds Riku so much of Sora that he feels a little sick. They really should get that DNA test. Then Sora could still have a brother after Riku’s gone. He chokes back another fit of giggling.  
  
“Everything I died for,” Riku says, reaching up and chucking his sunglasses across the van.  
  
Roxas gets to his feet, hesitantly, reaching for the extra body armor that Sora points him to.  
  
“I’m sorry, Riku,” he says, and starts undoing the latches on the door.  
  
“Train’s leaving Sora,” Riku murmurs. The light doesn’t hurt. For the first time since he was five, the light didn’t hurt. He was going into conversion, full stop. “You want to jab and go?”  
  
Sora makes a little humming sound, like he’s considering. It’s selfish, but Riku’s heart gives a little jump at that—at the idea that he really might be alone after this—that he might have to wait this out alone and hope that he can blow his brains out before fully losing himself.  
  
“Nope,” he chirps. “No way I’m letting you finish this without me.”  
  
The door shuts behind Roxas just as Sora jabs the needles full of a mixture of sedatives and white blood cells into the bend of Riku’s elbow.  
  
“You’ve got half an hour,” Sora says. Now that they don’t have company his voice is empty again—lost. “There’s no guarantee you’ll be lucid after that,” he finishes, voice hitching a little as he repeats words that they both know.  
  
“Sora,” he whispers, selfish to the very end. He wants to wrap Sora in his arms—kiss the breath out of him and forget that they’re here, that this is it, but as infected as he is, he would literally be kissing the breath out of Sora—ensuring that he’ll have the same fate as Riku. He’s selfish, but he’s not that selfish.  
  
“I’m here,” Sora whispers, and it shouldn’t be reassuring to feel the cool press of a gun nudge up against the base of his skull, but just like that, his mind goes clear.  
  
“I love you,” he gasps, voice choked with emotion. The first time he says it it comes out garbled with tears, clogged with his heartstrings. He repeats himself and is rewarded when Sora’s lips brush against his hair.  
  
“I know, Riku. I love you, too. You and me. Always.”  
  
One last chance to roll the dice, tell the truth, and shame the devil. He never asked to be a hero. Nobody ever gave him the option to say no.  
  
In the van that carried them across the country, through the last months of his life, his brother standing ready to pull the trigger, Riku’s hands came down, and he wrote.  
  
Was it worth it?  
  
.  
  
RED FLAG DISTRIBUTION RED FLAG DISTRIBUTION RED FLAG DISTRIBUTION  
  
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE ALERT LEVEL ALPHA SPREAD TO ALL NEWS SITES IMMEDIATELY  
  
REPOST FREELY REPOST FREELY REPOST FREELY  
FEED IS LIVE  
  
My name is Riku Mason. For the past several years, I’ve been providing one of the world’s many windows into the news, chronicling current events and attempting, in my own small way, to offer context and perspective. I have always pursued the truth above all other things, even when the truth came at the cost of my own comfort and well-being. It seems, now, that I pursued the truth even when it would mean my life, although I was unaware of it at the time.  
    My name is Riku Mason. According to the time stamp on the field test unit (model XH-237, known for reliability and, God help me, accuracy), I legally died eleven minutes ago. But for now, at this moment, my name is still Riku Mason, and this is… I guess you can call this my last postcard from the Wall. There are some things you need to know, and we don’t have much time.  
    As I write this, my brother is standing behind me with the barrel of a gun pressed against the back of my neck, where a blast will sever the spinal cord with the smallest possible spray radius. In my bloodstream, a large dose of sedatives mixed with a serum based on my own immune system is running a race against the virus that is in the process of taking over my cells. My nose isn’t clogged and I can swallow, but I feel lethargic, and it’s hard to breathe. I tell you this so you’ll understand that this isn’t a hoax, this isn’t about some sophomoric attempt to increase the ratings or site traffic. This is real. Everything I am about to tell you is the truth. Believe me, understand, and act, before it’s too late.  
    If you’re viewing this from the main page of After the End Times, you’ll see a download link labeled “Campaign_Notes.zip” on the left-hand side of your screen. Possession of the documents behind that link may be considered treason by the government of the United States of America. Please. Click. Download. Read. Repost to any forum you can, any message board or photo-sharing site or blog that you can reach. The data contained in those files is as essential to our freedom and survival as the report of Dr. Vexen Matras proved to be during the Rising. I am not overstating the data’s importance. There isn’t enough time for that.  
    Neither is there enough time for me to repeat the facts that are already codified and ready for you to download. Let this suffice for all the things I cannot say, do not have the time to say, will never say, and wish I could: They are lying to us. They are willfully channeling research away from the pursuit of a cure for this disease, and they are doing it under the auspices of our own government. I don’t know who “they” are. I didn’t live long enough to find out. Governor Tate served their interests. So, I regret to say, did Kairi Meissonier, previously a part of this reporting site.  
    They want us to stay afraid.  
    They want us to stay controlled.  
    They want us to stay sick.  
    Please, don’t let them do this to our world. I am begging you from the Wall, because it’s all that’s left for me to do. It’s all I can do. Don’t let them keep us frightened and hiding in our homes. Let us be what we were intended to be: human and free and able to make our own choices. Read what I have written, understand what they intend for us, for all of us, and decide to live.  
    They made a mistake in killing me because, alive or dead, the truth won’t rest. My name is Riku Mason, and I am begging you. Rise up while you can.  
    Namine I’m so sorry.  
    Kairi I’m so sorry.  
    Roxas I’m so sorry.  
    Sora I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I didn’t mean it I would take it all back if I could but I can’t I can’t I I I I I I I I all fading words going can’t do this can’t Sora please Sora please I love you I love you I always you I know I Sora please can’t hold on everything jfdh can’t do this jhjnfbnnnn mmm have to my name my name is Sora I love you Sora please gngn please SHOOT ME SORA SHOOT ME N—  
  
TERMINATE LIVE FEED  
RED FLAG DISTRIBUTION RED FLAG DISTRIBUTION RED FLAG DISTRIBUTION  
  
REPOST FREELY  
  
  
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 _I’ve spent my whole life imagining worlds other than the one that I was born in. Everybody does. The one world I never imagined was a world without a Riku. So how come that’s the world I have to live with?_  
 **—Sora Mason**  
  
 _I’m sorry._  
 **—Riku Mason**  
  
.  
  
(Namine’s eyes on the video screen were wide and shiny with horror. She’d always been such a good friend of his—so good. Riku was bad at making friends, but with her, it was natural.  
  
“Sora where are you?” she gasps, and you snicker.  
  
“I’m in the van,” you say, spreading your arms wide. The gun dangles from your fingers, so very heavy. You let your eyes slide closed, dark like all those hotel rooms you’d fixed up for him, because his eyes got hurt so easy. You can’t see Namine’s tiny horrified face like this, or the blood drying on the walls, or the mess of your brother. The dark is your friend. “Riku’s here too, but you can’t really say hi just now. He’s indisposed. Also I blew his brains out all over the wall.”  
  
You giggle and the sound overlaps her sharp, “Oh my god.”  
  
There’s been an error. You weren’t supposed to live. Riku was supposed to.  
  
Error error error, your brain whispers.  
  
You keep your eyes closed.)  
  
.  
  
...but they were us, our children, our selves,  
These shades who walk the cloistered dark,  
With empty eyes and clasping hands,  
And wander, isolate, alone, the space between  
Forgiveness and the penitent’s grave.  
  
 **—From _Eakly, Oklahoma_ ,**  
 **originally published in _By the Sounding Sea_ , **  
**the blog of Kairi Meissonier, February 11, 2040**  
  
  
.  
  
(Eventually though, you have to get up. It isn’t all that hard to convince Shang to let you out with a blood test or two, and after that, it’s not too hard to get to Tate.  
  
It’s harder when he seizes hold of Aqua’s husband and holds a syringe to his neck, but whatever, you’ve got this.  
  
 _Keep it together, bone-head_ , Riku hisses in your head. You don’t flinch, just blink, the gun in your hand never wavering away from Tate’s face. _You think I want to be an only child?_  
  
“I’ve got it, Riku,” you mutter.  
  
In your ear, Namine goes “What’s that?”  
  
“Nothing,” you say, because Dr. Wynne’s on the line and it’s time for you to climb on stage.  
  
Eventually, taking in the crowd, he lets Terra go, but the problem is that he takes the moment to plunge the syringe into his own neck.  
  
“Hey Riku,” he whispers, adjusting his aim. “Check this out.”  
  
 _Bam_.)  
  
.  
  
 _The next person who says “I’m sorry” is going to get punched in the nose. Because “I’m sorry” doesn’t do a damn thing except remind me that this can’t be fixed. This is my world now. And I don’t want it._  
 **—Sora Mason**  
  
 _I love my brother. I love my job. I love the truth. So here’s hoping no one ever makes me choose between them._  
 **—Riku Mason**  
  
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Riku’s story ended where so many stories have ended since the Rising: with a man—in this case, his adoptive brother and best friend, Sora—holding a gun to the base of his skull as the virus in his blood betrayed him, transforming him from a thinking human being into something better suited to a horror movie.  
  
That’s where his story should have ended, with his brother pulling the trigger.  
  
Instead he wakes up in a white room to a reflection that isn’t quite his own—hair too long, body too frail, eyes too green.  
  
“So, how long have I been a clone?” he asks the man who comes to check on him, pleased at the way the man flinches. He gives a sharp smile.  
  
He has a brother to find, and find him he will.  
  
.  
  
 _Rise up while you can._  
 **—Riku Mason**  
  
 _It’s the oldest story in the world. Boy loves boy. Boy loses boy. Boy gets boy back thanks to the unethical behavior of megalomaniacal mad scientists who never met a corpse they wouldn’t try to resurrect. Anyone coming within a hundred yards of my happy ending had better pray that they’re immune to bullets._  
 **—Sora Mason**  
  



End file.
